


this is what it is

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Series: childhood living is (not) easy to do [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 100 Year War (Avatar TV), Aang is a sweetheart, Ableism, All these characters need therapy, And like, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Toph Beifong, Bending (Avatar), Child Neglect, Child Soldiers, Earthbending & Earthbenders, Emotional Baggage, Families of Choice, Family, Family Feels, Figuring Yourself Out, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Healing, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Learning to be vulnerable, Near Death Experiences, Past Child Abuse, Platonic Relationships, There is nothing wrong with letting the people who love you help you, Toph Beifong-centric, Toph Being Awesome, Trauma, Unconventional Families, Vulnerability, Vulnerable Toph, War, basically a deity, oof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:55:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25072702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: At her house, she plays the porcelain doll. She smiles pretty and stays quiet, the perfect daughter, the soft shut in. She hides skinned knees underneath her skirts and dirty fingernails in the curl of her hands. Sharp words and cold anger bubble up in her mind and she keeps them down, works them out in crumbled stone and collapsed caverns until she’s sweaty and panting and alive, alive, alive.Toph: Another character study.
Relationships: Aang & Toph Beifong, Aang & Toph Beifong & Katara & Sokka & Suki & Zuko, Lao Beifong & Toph Beifong, Poppy Beifong & Toph Beifong, Toph Beifong & Iroh, Toph Beifong & Katara, Toph Beifong & Sokka, Toph Beifong & Suki, Toph Beifong & The Gaang, Toph Beifong & Zuko
Series: childhood living is (not) easy to do [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1802353
Comments: 38
Kudos: 238
Collections: toph stan library





	this is what it is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosemallow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosemallow/gifts), [braigwen_s](https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/gifts), [immolationfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/immolationfox/gifts).



> These are the scraps of my previous Toph fic- "these small hands"- that didn't work with the original story. I was trying to do too much at once, exploring her relationship with love and with vulnerability at the same time, so I split it into two separate works. :3
> 
> To rosemallow, braigwen_s, and fortunati, your kindness to me and your friendship to one another inspired me to get this out here this week. Thank you <3

Toph is taught from very a young age that the only one you can truly rely on is yourself.

This is a little girl who has grown in banished halls and empty rooms. Who has always been ushered away and kept quiet and kept silent, no matter how loud she is screaming inside her own head. 

There is this power gathering in the palms of her small hands, a strength curling in the curve of her spine. The earth sings underneath her feet and it’s as if she’s the only one who can hear it, the way it echoes.

This is the truth about Toph: she vanishes.

She vanishes into caves and has her tears wiped away by nuzzling badger moles instead of concerned parents. They teach her to wait, they teach her to listen. Their fur is coarse under her small hands, and their touch gentle.

She vanishes to the tops of mountains, so high and far away that the air comes thin in her throat. She practices and she listens as the world moves on and on and on, spinning beneath her feet until she feels as if she is the only one who holds steady. 

She vanishes to arenas, to illegal earthbending rings, and battles with opponents twice, thrice, four times her age and any number of times her size. She wins, and when she doesn’t, she tries and tries again until she does.

( _ This _ is the truth about Toph, when she’s growing up: she vanishes, for hours on end. And nobody notices.)

This is Toph, five years old and just starting to figure out her place in the world.

She is told that she is fragile. She is told that she is helpless, and she must follow all the rules and verdicts, that they are for her own good. 

She is told that she is broken. Not in so many words, but enough that she can hear it in the silences between.

And she wonders how true this can really be, when the earth sings under her feet and her small hands hold the power of giants. 

She is five and there is a blocked door keeping her in her room, and she plants herself with deep roots and bursts her way into freedom. Even as her parents scold her for the broken locks, tut at the dirt on her new dress, and turn away back to their meeting, she feels something brilliant growing in her chest.

What can be said about a little girl who is raised more by an arena then by her mother and father? Toph is nine and  _ tiny _ , walking among these giants in their own rights, fighters who tower above her, behemoths. 

Some of them tell her to go home. Some of them give her tips, half hearted advice. Some of them laugh in her face.

She doesn’t listen to them, not really.  _ Rely on yourself  _ is the lesson learned and the lesson taught, because so often help is because of pity, because of this ridiculous preconceived notion that she is incapable, unable, weak and fragile and  _ helpless. _

There is the power of giants in her small fingers. The earth sings to her, constant and steady, as strong as stone. 

She refuses to be weak. She refuses to be helpless. Toph knows what happens when the world perceives you that way. She knows that you will be hidden, disregarded and kept secret, a cracked piece of pottery removed from the display case and tucked away in the back cupboard, left to gather dust.

_ Rely on yourself,  _ because no one out there will trust you to do so. No one else will care for you unless you can pull your own weight, prove your worth. This is the lesson learned. This is the lesson taught. She learns it from the sound of applause and behind locked doors, the embarrassed, frustrated voice of her father when he shoos her away from meeting new people, from the way her mother keeps quiet and watches: the perfect lady, the perfect wife.

Toph grows up  _ here, _ in the midst of sweaty men and flailed insults, curses and grunts and victory prances. She learns how to hold herself when she enters a battle, to tip her chin up and smirk and keep her spine arched in a proud bow. The badgermoles taught her how to wait, how to listen, but it is here she learns how to _ shout _ , how to jeer, how to be heard in a world so insistent of drowning her out. 

People applaud, in the arena, when she throws the right insult. They applaud, in the arena, when she wins. The attention focuses on her, just her, and it is not admonishing or belittling or pity. It’s adoration.

The persona is meant for a battle. For a fight. But for Toph, every day is a struggle, seeking and seeking and seeking that attention, and she learns how to breathe in it, this brash confidence and arrogant aloofness, carves it into armour, into a shell, and calls it home.

At her house, she plays the porcelain doll. She smiles pretty and stays quiet, the perfect daughter, the soft shut in. She hides skinned knees underneath her skirts and dirty fingernails in the curl of her hands. Sharp words and cold anger bubble up in her mind and she keeps them down, works them out in crumbled stone and collapsed caverns until she’s sweaty and panting and  _ alive, alive, alive.  _

The earth sings. It  _ sings. _ Toph moves mountains inches at a time and seethes at her own failings. Masters the earth’s secrets because she can’t afford not to. Battling is like breathing, for her, because if you can bring a grown man to the ground faster than some people can blink, then no one looks at you like you are small. 

Toph feels invincible in the arena, and for a little girl who is so often neglected and forgotten and hurt by the lack of  _ anything _ at all, it’s a heady feeling. 

This is what it is to be Toph, twelve years old and running away.

There is this anger inside of her and it builds under her skin like permafrost, frozen and unbroken ground. There is a grief inside of her because she had thought, had thought that _ this _ time, this time things would be different. That she’d be welcomed with open arms into her parents’ embrace. That they’d understand.

She’s young, and she doesn't know, yet, the things she’s going to face. The monsters she’s going to fight. She doesn't know yet how to be gentle, how to take being treated gently with grace. She’s been on her own so long she doesn't know how to be helped, how to help and expect nothing in turn. 

Before, there was never any need for it. 

She is not vulnerable. She refuses to be vulnerable.

To be vulnerable is to be weak. Is to be shunned. Is to be kept a secret from the world you so desperately want to be a part of.

And she won’t.

She won’t  _ she won’t she won’t- _

She’s never had any friends.

This is another truth. Another lesson. Broken things don’t get to have this, to have soft smiles and shared laughter, inside jokes and ridiculous shenanigans. 

Broken things don’t get to be themselves. They only get to be the things other people make them to be. Toph curls into her shell and is petty and arrogant and antagonistic, because this is what the world teaches her to be, this is how you avoid getting hurt.

Lessons taught and lessons learned. Never let it be said that Toph doesn’t take things to heart.

But here’s the thing, here’s the  _ thing- _

They find her, these strange children, they find her with their eyes full of stardust and determination painted into the creases of their brows. They ask for her, welcome her, invite her to a world with no locked doors and no rules, a level of instantaneous respect she has craved all her life.

They find her, force her hand, and her parents look at her in all her glory and all her strength, the power of giants in her hands and the earth singing its symphonies, and still see her as something fragile and broken, a porcelain doll they have to hide away, a porcelain doll that will never be fixed.

It aches. It  _ aches. _ It has ached all her life.

And at first, she carries that ache all on her own, carries her own weight. She keeps herself self-contained. There is something inside of her  _ desperate  _ to prove herself, desperate to make friends and be included and show that she’s strong and determined and true. That her eyes, unseeing, can hold that stardust, too.

She knows all too well what happens when you make yourself a burden. She knows all too well, the way people can twist you into false versions of yourself. 

Vulnerability is a weakness. She will not be vulnerable.

But slowly, carefully, she falls in love with this, with the wind in her hair and the way she can make the boys laugh. She falls in love with being respected, with being treated like a teacher of great knowledge and a fighter of great skill instead of a fragile piece of glass. She falls in love with sparring, where nothing is held back except for the sake of having fun. She falls in love with being sweaty and stinky and  _ happy _ at the end of a long day’s work.

She falls in love with the people, with their kindnesses and their flaws and the ways they make her smile. In the fact that they always,  _ always  _ notice she’s missing.

An old man tells her  _ There is nothing wrong with letting people who love you help you.  _ He tells her over tea, when her emotions cascade inside of her chest, and she doubts.

She doubts, but she also remembers.

(Lessons taught and lessons learned. Toph schools herself in principles and holds onto them with small calloused fingers for all her days.)

This is what it is to be Toph, twelve years old and stranded in the desert, realising for the first time in a long time just how very powerless you are.

She’s blind, and everything is but buzzing moving shapes to her senses, soft sand and hissing wind. Her friend is before her, twisted with rage and grief, and there is a trembling sort of  _ power _ vibrating the very air she breathes.

This is not the boy she knows, who is soft willed and soft handed, who laughs at poorly formatted jokes and whispers forgotten stories in deep dark nights, something fragile in the way his heart beats and the solemn silence as the rest of this rag tag group listens. The boy who came to her in a garden that was a cage and saw her as she was, and embraced all her rough and calloused edges with glee.

She has laughed at this boy, has teased him and aggravated him and called him a skinny livered wimp. She has  _ hurt _ this boy, has pushed his boundaries and sent him flying into trees, and he has forgiven her and stood up to her and stood by her nonetheless.

This is not that boy. 

This is a stranger, a power, a child turned god. The ground shakes beneath her feet, thrums with an energy that is not natural, and the wind howls in her ears, sand scraping at her cheeks. The earth is not singing, it is  _ screaming,  _ and everyone is running, running, and she realizes with a start that she is helpless here, being pulled away from danger like she swore to herself she never would be ever again. 

But she does not resist: she is afraid.

(She swore she would never be that again, either.)

If she is attacked right now, she doesn’t think she would be able to do a single thing. And this is terrifying.

Energy of a thousand spirits, screaming into the void. It is rattling her to her bones, it is rattling her to her very core. The guilt weighs heavy in her chest.

_ You did this,  _ she thinks,  _ you pushed your friend to this mindless grief.  _ And she aches.

She is supposed to be invincible, and all she feels is small.

What do you do, in the face of this? A child so used (so desperate) to being invincible she’s turned a shell of armour into a home, has let a brace for a battle, a persona for a crowd, enfuse with every aspect of her being, suddenly feeling no larger than a bug. 

So much grief and so much rage. Toph wonders if they’re all wounded, just a little, somewhere inside of them where the sun does not touch. 

She wonders, and does what she always does when faced with a problem she cannot defeat: she trains, and overcomes.

Or tries too, nonetheless. 

She practices in any free moment she has, somewhere between travelling and getting Appa back, practices with the inarticulate particles of sand, makes them come together through sheer force of will, feels the way they separate and yet are all the same, still  _ earth, _ still bendable.

And later, later, when everyone is distracted and exhausted and far away, Toph will stomp her feet and make intricate sand creations before a rather bemused sky bison. Appa will not understand, will not understand why her eyes shine with stardust and her brows wrinkle in determination, will not understand why she wraps her arm around his leg and buries her face in his fur, afterwards, whispering, “No one’s ever taking you away like that ever again. Not under my watch.”

But he is a wise bison, a kind bison, and he will let her hold him and lovingly lick her hair till it sticks on end, until she laughs and complains and backs away smiling.

(This is the basis of metal bending, this little girl so determined to make things right, so willing to bend over backwards to master this singing world. This is the basis of metalbending:  _ friendship, _ and what a strange thought for someone who once was so alone.)

This is what it is, to be Toph. She grows up in isolated hallways and crowded arenas, a conundrum of sound and silence, a clash between worlds.

Toph grows up in a war, on the front lines. She's faced a gnawing sort of hunger that claws at you from the inside out when rations are low. Has crowded over battle plans and talked tactics and weighed pros and cons. 

She convinces herself in her mind that this is just another Earth Rumble battle, just another fight. More opponents and higher stakes than a wounded pride, but the same principles.

It never stops her heart from pounding. 

There is armour, refitted to her small frame. Sokka's face had been twisted while he was doing it, cutting down and putting back together material and metal meant for a grown man to fit a small girl.

Toph is twelve years old the first time she faces another human being and realizes they would kill her, if given a chance. Is twelve years old when one of her closest friends is almost taken from her in cold blood, a flash of light she could never have seen, could not have protected him from.

She calls him Twinkle Toes, because of his light feet. This is a boy who laughs at gravity, who seems so tentative to make an impact on the earth beneath him, who is still learning to stand strong in the face of a world so intent on weighing down on his too small shoulders.

But his heart has always been so  _ strong, _ whenever she felt it, this vibrant living thing that with every beat thrummed  _ alive, alive, alive.  _

And Toph feels it here, too, standing outside the medical tent. But it’s so gentle, so faltering, practically nothing in the face of the warriors of the camp preparing to evacuate, in the face of Sokka’s repetitive pacing, back and forth, back and forth. Katara is in the tent, every fiber of her being tensed in narrowed concentration, stone faced and hardened. 

Later, the older girl will cry, because Katara only lets herself weep when no one else needs her to be strong. Toph will sit besides her in the tent and let her, listening to that faint, faint beat.

_ Alive, alive, alive, but only barely, but only just- _

She is twelve years old when she realizes  _ this could be me, this could so, so easily be me.  _ Is twelve years old when she realizes that she would infinitely prefer her own star dying out to living with the loss of one of her friends.

And it is terrifying.

It happens in fazes and it happens in starts, and her small team comes together and falls apart. There is training and frustration and this ever present fear, and Toph breathes through it and pushes herself harder,  _ harder, _ because she will not be weak, she cannot be weak-

And Toph-

She finds love, here, finds herself. But she still struggles with it, struggles with needing help. With not doing it on her own. This is a girl who has found a family who loves her despite all apparent odds, who guards it so fiercely because she knows what it is to go without. This is a girl who faced twelve long years of fragility being acquitted with shamefulness, and tries to brace herself for anything. 

This is a little girl who realizes all too suddenly she has absolutely everything to lose. 

The power to move mountains in the palms of her hand. Something inside of her chest singing  _ alive alive alive.  _ Her shell is hardened and widened to protect more than just herself, strengthened to carry more than her own weight. 

She remembers being stranded in the dessert and being terrified of feeling powerless. This is an old fear masquerading as new, and now she fears being helpless in the sense of being unable to help.

(She will not lose them.  _ She will not she will not she will not _ . Toph will build walls of rock and stone and iron, surround those she cares about most, and will stand a behemoth of protection. She will do it on her own.)

But this is what it is, to be Toph: you learn that you cannot be invincible. That family means protection goes both ways. That love goes both ways. 

She's twelve years old when she finds herself hanging out into nothing, with only the company of whistling wind and calloused fingertips pressed against her own.

She is so helpless. She is so, so helpless, and she is scared.

This is the end, and she is going to die here, falling into nothingness, the void swallowing her whole.

She is hanging by fingertips. He’s not letting her go.

A year ago, a _ lifetime _ ago, when Toph was younger and carried so many aches inside her chest, she would have believed this to be it. She would have been convinced that Sokka would let her go and save his own skin, just like that. Vulnerability had so often been painted onto her skin, unwanted and untrue, and it has only brought her hardships.

_ You can only rely on yourself. To be seen as fragile is to be shunned and locked away and removed, removed, removed- _

But Toph is no longer that girl. The most vulnerable position she can possibly imagine, fingertips and open air, and she knows that there is love, in this, and love goes both ways.

_ Have faith,  _ some small part of her is singing, thousands of feet off the ground,  _ have faith. _

And she does. Against all odds, she does. Everything inside of her is screaming but she knows she won’t be let go, that she can trust in this, that he won’t ever, ever let her go, not if he can help it. 

She has fought all her life for her own existence. Has joined a war for the sake of it, has melded and grown and then thrown herself into battle after battle for the sake of her friends.

Twelve years old, and there is this boy with eyes full of stardust and determination in his brow, and for the first time in her young life someone is really and truly fighting for  _ her, _ is willing to give everything, willing to give  _ anything- _

Sokka speaks, words almost lost over the roaring wind. There are tears in her eyes and she lets them fall.

He holds on tight. He’s not letting go. 

If they go down, they’ll go down together.

_ Breathe,  _ she thinks,  _ breathe,  _ and her heart pounds.

_ Alive, alive, alive- _

This is what it is to be Toph: she is twelve years old, and for the first time she can remember she trusts, completely and utterly, in something that is not her own self. 

This is what it is to be Toph: she trusts, and she _ lives. _

Toph grows. She learns. She faces a war and an invasion and all their plans coming up in smoke. She faces a war and comes out on the other side of it, still breathing. 

There is something to be said about letting go of years of conditioning, something to be said about making your shells large enough to accommodate three or four or more.

Her hands have the power of giants, made to move mountains. And she does, she  _ does,  _ but she also uses them to hold, to reach out and to be reached out  _ to _ . 

The strength that is held in little bones. The strength to persist, to rebuild, to  _ live  _ in the face of a life that pushes you down over and over and over. 

_ Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime? _

_ I don’t see why not. _

Toph has been taught all her life that she is small and weak and shameful for her own existence. This broken twisted thing was something her parents implanted in her chest and called love when it was anything but.

But this is what it is, being twelve, being  _ Toph,  _ escaping into this world that is all connected and frail, finding hands to hold and things to fight for. This is what it is, to heal, to dig out rotting roots and plant new ones.

She finds herself in the ways she makes other people smile, in softly falling rain and warm sun baked earth. Toph finds herself in the way that other people love her, for her, in all the ways she deserves such care with every crease of her small fingers. She finds herself in campfire stories and battles waged and lost and won. 

_ There is nothing wrong with letting people who love you help you.  _

This is the lesson taught and the lesson learned. Toph takes it inside of herself and lets it grow. 

Toph is a warrior, a child. She is a bit brash, a bit stubborn, and lashes out with anger a bit too quick.

But she is also brave, and kind. She’s got this compassion building up inside of her, this strength residing in her little bones. She’s got this  _ love  _ running through her veins.

Toph was young, once. Younger. Young and untested and desperately lonely. She had wondered how she could be broken with all this before her, the power of giants in the palms of her hands and the earth singing in her ears.

She had wondered.

But the truth is this, is the fact that she never was anyone’s broken thing, was never broken at all. She is not a chipped plate nor a porcelain doll. There has always been something brilliant growing in her chest and it has been  _ Toph,  _ in all her glory: unedited and unrefined and unapologetic. 

People grow and heal and change. And it’s hard, when you’re young, surrounded by uncertainty and chaos and war. But Aang traces the pads of her fingers over his tattoos and Zuko lets her rant about days gone wrong. Katara spars with her on late evenings and calls her beautiful with the sunrises. Suki teaches her how to hold her own without bending while Sokka tells her stories of times long ago and far away.

Blood traitors and runaways, vagabonds and heroes, kindnesses and mercies and miracles all wrapped up into growing beings of scars and skin and bone. Toph finds herself here, in this family she found all on her own. Finds  _ love  _ here, and masters  _ herself  _ with just as much determination as she has mastered the singing earth beneath her feet.

The war ends. The pain eases. This is a world filled with so much grief and so much rage, but it is healing, fresh tilled earth and young growing things. There is a coronation and a promise and a start, and it is enough.

Tomorrow, they are going to the beach. The sun will be shining, and she will feel its warmth painted across her skin. Zuko’s laughter will echo, even as he winces, and Sokka’s grin will shine through his voice as he carefully gets the older boy situated under an umbrella.

Suki will challenge Aang to a sand castle competition, with Katara as the acting judge. Toph will listen in on their squabbling, to their jokes and their teasing and their chortles. They will spend the day on soft sand that she has mastered, will spend a day relaxing, spend a day surrounded by this gentle, bursting love.

_ Alive alive alive- _

Tomorrow, she will ask her friends to teach her how to swim, will step into the surf and feel the water lap around her shins, vulnerable and unafraid.

(This is what it is to be Toph: she is thirteen years old, and she is happy.)


End file.
